 Okay, we're back, we're live for the 3 o'clock block here on A Given Friday. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech, and once in a while, we get personal. That says Cynthia Sinclair. She's a host here. And she's a host of a show she has designed called Finding Respect in the Chaos. And when you think about that title, it's laden with secondary meaning. It's not an accident, it's not a coincidence, it has a lot of secondary meaning. And our show today is sort of an examination of that meaning. It's an examination of what in the world we're talking about when we're looking for fighting respect in the chaos. And we're going to talk about Cynthia. We're going to find out the backstory of this show, and the backstory of Cynthia. And it is personal. I am so honored to be here as your host, Cynthia. Oh my gosh, thank you for having me. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to have a show too, because I think this is such an important issue that doesn't get talked about enough. We do too. Thank you. The show is about abuse. The show is about people who do bad things to other people who are creating chaos for our society. Right. And Cynthia is fighting that chaos. Fighting it with finding respect. That's really what the show is more about. It's more about what do we do about all those bad things that people are doing? And how do we find places where we can heal? And there's actually lots of places. And we can network together. Now that the Me Too campaign has happened, right, it's like the shame is gone. The silence is gone. You can come out. You can come out. We can network together and help each other find that respect that's out there in all the chaos. Say, not everybody is as passionate about this as you are, so it is a worthy enterprise to look into your background and find the backstory. So Cynthia Sinclair, will you tell us your backstory? I will. I spent many years as a United Methodist minister in the south, in Alabama, of all things, and who would have thought that this old California hippie would end up in the middle of nowhere, Alabama, serving churches. One of the churches I was serving, the head guy, was the Grand Wizard of the KKK. Oh, no. And I thought, you want me to love that guy? Well, I can't do it. Lord, I can't do it. It was the ultimate lesson in love the sinner, hate the sin. And it was a difficult lesson to learn. They were the hardest people I've ever had to love. That's for sure. And as a woman, you know, and it was just Women's Day yesterday, National Women's Day. Big thing. We had a show yesterday about that. It was a very big thing. And here in Hawaii, you know, we've got lots of wonderful examples of women that have stepped up to the plate, Patsy Minks, you know, number one with the Title IX stuff that she got going and being the first woman of color and the first woman, you know, to get, to make it to Washington, D.C., like that and to make the kind of changes that started this whole thing that we are allowed to come out now and recognize the power that we do have. We've come a long way. We've come a long way, baby. In our lifetimes, we've come a long way. Yes, we have. But not far enough, if you ask me. All right. Not nearly far enough. All right. In 30 years, when all this started, what have we done? Well, you know, really, the major stuff has happened since the Me Too campaign. I mean, I've been out here since the early 80s doing all this stuff, but you know, it's nice to have other people with me out here fighting this good fight. Well, many of them, and feel they feel strongly, but we tarry. Yes. Let's go back to how it all started for you. How it all started. Well, I think we have a picture of me when I was just a little one that I'd like to show that picture. I recognize you immediately since you're here. Absolutely. Look the same, don't I? Those big green innocent eyes. Those are the eyes that take me back to my very first memories. I don't remember back any further than when I was five. That's my five-year-old school picture, my kindergarten picture. That's when I can remember my first memories of my father molesting me and sharing me with all of his friends. No. Yes. Oh, wow. A lot of times pedophiles like to feel better about what they're doing by grouping with other pedophiles, and so they get together and all go camping together and then swap the children around. And it happens more often than you might think. Oh my goodness. So as I grew up and started to remember, I didn't have any memories, actually, until I was 30 years old. This picture is the next year, and this is where I have my first memories of my father used to take a hammer and break my feet and break my toes. If he didn't have a hammer, he would use a rock. And he told me that he wanted me to remember with every step I took what he would do to me if I ever told anybody what he was doing to me at night. Oh my goodness. There are lots of ways that abusers manipulate the kids by silencing them because, you know, they're so afraid that they're going to get caught. They only operate in silence and in secrecy. So they've got to terrify the children so that they won't speak about it. Unfortunately, my abuse was so horrific that I didn't even remember it. I could not handle. Block it out. Exactly. I just blocked it all out. And of course, that led to a marriage full of domestic violence, which is, I think we have some pictures of that, too. Yes, we do. There you are with a black eye. My ex-husband did that to me more than just once. He fractured my skull, put me in the hospital a couple times. It was a real terror-filled time. You never knew if you said the wrong thing or looked the wrong way, or even if you didn't do anything wrong, if they had a bad day, they would come home and take it out on me. So when I first remembered my abuse, I was already married to this man, had two kids. My youngest was just a little one. And he was three months old when I had my first memories. And I believe it was the power of being a mom that made me remember, because in order to protect my children and to save my kids, I had to remember so that they would never be around my father. Yeah. Yeah. You had to teach them. And something in your mind made you access those memories so that you could benefit by them. Right. And so my kids could benefit by them more than anything, right? And so I actually took my father to court and sued him in civil court. Of course, I couldn't take him to criminal court. The statute of limitations was long gone at this point. So I took him to civil court. There was a brand new thing in the early 80s that was called the late discovery. And it just so happened that I heard about it and went. The lawyer was a local lawyer near where I lived, and so I was able to go. You took my case, and we won, which was pretty wonderful. What did you win? I won $60,000. A lot of money in those days, in those places. Right. And it paid for my therapy, more than anything. And so that was the important part, and more than anything, the money wasn't as important as making him be accountable, to have him stand up in court and be accountable for what had happened. We ended up successful in the suit, which was really great. And so it was nice to have him be accountable. I think that— What was his reaction to that, the man who would break your feet to keep you silent? Well, you know, he tried to reach out to me in the beginning. I was the first one to remember the abuse. So I was the silence breaker with my whole family, and he tried to, at first, deny it and want to stay friends with me. And then he did actually admit what he had done, which was really very healing and very validating to have that happen. Because most of the time they say, oh, what's wrong with you? How dare you make up that thing about me? And then, of course, you so often want to turn that inside anyway, and you don't want to put it where it belongs. And so a lot of times that's what happens for victims, is that they get that—they don't get that validation. So in that sense, I was really lucky that he admitted to what he had done. So I didn't have to question, oh, did I make it up? Am I really remembering correctly or, you know, something like that? So that was important. What about your husband who abused you? What happened there? I finally got up the nerve to say no more. I did not want my children to grow up thinking that's how they're supposed to treat their wife. I would tell him, I used to think I deserve this, but I know better now, is they working anymore, dude? And so it took me a while to actually stand up to him, but across town, it wasn't far enough away from him. Across the state, it wasn't really far enough away from him. So why did he follow you, stalk you? Oh, yeah. When I was in the same town, just across town, yeah, he would come and cut off my electricity, break my telephone. One time he broke the heater on a really cold winter and stuff like that, so we would always have to go and hide somewhere because he was always threatening to come. We meaning you and the children? Me and the children, yeah. And so I finally got away, moved up across the state, and a couple of times he came up there to broke my door down. So that was it for me. Across the country was just about right. I had had my first heart attack, and you know, it changes everything when that happens. And so I wanted to show my kids the country while I still could. So I put my house on the market, put everything I owned in storage, loaded up the kids in the dug, and we went to 17 states and took about... Travel is broadening. But it is wonderful. My kids loved it. We went to Yellowstone and Yosemite and the Grand Canyon and Mount Rushmore and all the cool places on the mainland. And then I went to just visit my boyfriend, who I'd been dating for a few years, down in Alabama, and he said, stay here, marry me now. And so that's how I ended up in Alabama as a minister all that time. You went into the ministry. What kind of, you know, what kind of, what was your reason for doing that? What was the approach to that particular vocation? Well, I had been called to be a minister when I was 15 years old, actually. I was always... My parents took us to church. It was the above suspicion element of what a lot of abusers do is they want to look like the perfect family, right? So that's what we were doing, looking like the perfect family, going to church all the way. That's how I, you know, met God and met Jesus there and it was like, oh, this is pretty good. I like this. There was comfort. There was healing. There was hope. Hope is the thing that keeps you going. I believe it's the thing that made me heal. It's the thing that keeps me going still to this day. And it is where my passion is to show other people, other victims, especially other survivors, that there is hope and healing on the other side of the abuse. So what kind of a minister were you? I mean, what did you do as a minister? How did you, you know, execute that, that, that office? Well, I'll tell you, at first I thought I wanted to be a social worker. And then when I had my heart attack, I had to quit school. And then I ended up in the south and started back into the church again and was my head minister at my church was saying, you need to do this. This is your, come on, you're a natural, you come on, you got to do this. And so finally I said, okay, I'm going to try. And so I went to the, through the candidacy process, which the United Methodist Church has, and three years later I came out with an appointment. So I was the head pastor. I served three little churches just south of Montgomery for four years. You were good at it. I loved it. Yes, God has given me the gift of gab. Can you tell? I can tell. We can all tell Cynthia. Yes, it's no surprise. Not something I even try to hide. Everyone's like, try to silence it, but I gave up because I just can't do it. And so I ended up serving those three churches and that was when I met the one church that had the guy that was from the KK, all the men in that church have hooded white sheets in their closet. They don't wear them anymore, but they didn't get rid of them either. That's so interesting because that's not nice. Right. The KKK. It's not nice. There's a lot of hatred in the KK. Oh my gosh. They used to try to convince me that God made black people lesser humans. I'd be like, excuse me, I'd hand them the Bible and say, you show me where he says that. And they couldn't because it doesn't. So then I would open the Bible and show them all the many, many scriptures where it says the opposite, you know, exactly the opposite. So it wasn't very popular with my congregation, needless to say, but that's not why I was there. I wasn't there to be popular. I was just there to do what God sent me there to do. An interesting set of circumstances for you. Cynthia, we're going to take a short break. I hate to take a break. I'm so interested in what you were telling me. When we come back, I'll show you a little bit about how I dealt with all of this. Yes. And we'll show you a trip around the world, too, and all of that. Okay, that sounds like a plan. We'll be right back. Hi. I'm Ethan Allen, host of Likeable Science on Think Tech Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m., I hope you'll join me for Likeable Science, where we'll dig into science, dig into the meat of science, dig into the joy and the light of science. We'll discover why science is indeed fun, why science is interesting, why people should care about science, and care about the research that's being done out there. It's all great. It's all entertaining. It's all educational. So I hope you'll join me for Likeable Science. Good afternoon. My name is Howard Wigg. I am the proud host of Code Green, a program on Think Tech Hawaii. We show at 3 o'clock in the afternoon every other Monday. My guests are specialists both from here and the mainland on energy efficiency, which means you do more for less electricity and you're generally safer and more comfortable while you're keeping dollars in your pocket. You know, maybe it's more than a coincidence that here the day after International Women's Day, we have Cynthia Sinclair telling us about her life story and about abuse here in the discussion of the origins of her show, Finding Respect in the Chaos. And if you've been listening, you've heard a lot of really tough things. And you got out of Alabama at some point. I did. Thank you very much. You looked at a different world at that point. I did. You dedicated yourself to good works. Can you talk about that? Can you talk about how you did that and where you went and how far you went? Okay, but first I'm going to tell you one little quick thing about how the main way I dealt with all this stuff is humor. Because if we don't find, and you can find humor, there's something funny. There's something good in even the worst of situations. You can find something funny, which led to one of my favorite jobs I've ever had in my entire life. That's me. I am the top one is Crazy May, who is my current clown that does all my stuff at the hospitals. I used to make money doing this, parties and whatnot, singing telegrams and all that sort of stuff. I don't do it as a living anymore. I just do it as a mission project. I go to the hospitals and whenever I know an underprivileged kid that doesn't clown. Do their skills and clowns out today. That's right. Just clown it around. It helps. It helps. Absolutely. If you can find humor in things, you can laugh your way through to the other side. Sure. You deal with tragedy through humor. Right. It softens it. It does. Even the Bible says a merry heart do good like a medicine. Yeah. Right? And in all of humor, there's tragedy too. Yes. Exactly. There you go. See? So, I've gone back to school when I came to Hawaii and I came back here to Hawaii because this is where my family is from. 2015 marked 150 years that my family has been here. My great-grandfather came over as an electrical engineer to install the electricity in the palace. And so the very first day that there was ever electricity on the island, it's actually not the day of the princess's birthday on the 4th, right? Yeah. I hope that's short. In front of the palace. Yeah. A test flip a few days beforehand. And that was the day my grandmother was born. That's the day my great-grandfather did the flip. Okay, let's celebrate. Wow, exciting. So it is kind of a cool, I have a really neat history. My family land was where the Hilton, Hawaiian villages now. My great-grandmother sold it for $50,000. Oh, she was. Which parts. I kind of think she was taking advantage of it, too, because I think, wait a minute, it was a lot of money back then, though. Yeah. But at any rate, so when I went back to school, I was awarded a couple of amazing study abroad scholarships. And I wrote my own independent study. And I went to 10 countries over the spring semester. And the title of my study was Domestic Violence and Child Abuse in Cross-Cultural Comparison. So by this time, you've already established your real direction in life. Oh, yes. With finding respect in the chaos. I've been doing that since, oh gosh, since the 80s. So I'd already figured that out quite a while back. Partly because God would just bring these people into my life from out of the blue. People would ask me for help. And I think, how do you know? Do I have like a sign over my head? Approachable, Cynthia. That's partly it, I guess, maybe. And people can feel that I have a big heart. So they know that I can help, I will help. So you've been involved in good works really ever since. What kind of good works are you doing now with respect to finding the respect in the chaos? Well, I'll tell you, besides this show, I'm also a journalist for our school paper at Windward. And I always write stories about this subject, things that we're doing, things that we've done, things that we're going to do, all about awareness. Because we really need to raise awareness. And so often I've been hearing lately, and it really concerns me, that people don't want to hear about it. It's that age. Even though Me Too just started, I'm already seeing Me Too Boo Hoo, I think was one of the shows that was just on even here. People are like, oh. We investigated that very issue yesterday. Just, yeah, it's like I don't really want to know anymore. See how the fickle finger of public awareness moves on. Exactly. And a lot of people, they've had enough. They don't want to do it anymore. They want to move to other issues. You expect that. But it's very regrettable, because the issue has not been resolved. Right. Exactly. And that's why we need to keep talking about it. And that's why I'm so grateful for the chance to do that on this show. Because I give people an opportunity to come and tell their stories. There's a survivor central at ThinkTechHawaii.com, which is a place— And the telephone number, yeah. And they can send their stories, their survivor stories. To me, there are other people that might benefit from what other people have done to survive. And that way we can get this network going. And I know people don't want to look at ugly things. As humans, that's just how we're hardwired not to look at us. That's why those things continue, because nobody really addresses them. Thank you. Exactly. That's exactly right. That's how they prolificate. And until we shine the light on that stuff and people get tough—sorry, get tough, people. It's real. It's there. We have to take the blinders off. And until we take the blinders off, it's going to continue to proliferate. You know, yesterday in that discussion of Women's Day and abuse and all this, we were discussing the difference, the distinction between women's lib, women's liberation, which had gone on a long time, and sexual abuse. And I suggest to you, they're really not exactly the same thing. They are not the same thing at all. Sexual abuse is far more offensive, actually, although they're certainly related. So what is the condition of sexual abuse, of abuse of women these days here and elsewhere? Because you study that, you think of that, you read about that, and you write about it. What is the condition, the status? Well, like I said, it started to be really—everybody's talking about it. Everybody wants to look at it. Like you said, now suddenly they're like, I keep hearing from people, oh, I'm done with that. I don't want to talk about that anymore. I just want to move on. We need to stay focused. It needs to continue to be talked about. People just need to toughen up about it so that they can look at it. So that we can stop. There are a lot of issues in equality, certainly, and not only equality of the genders, but equality—inequality in general. But let me ask you, if you were looking for a solution, something to ameliorate this problem which exists. We know this exists not only in the United States, but really in many, many places. It's cultural. Sorry. It's part of the cultural condition of the species. But civilized people rise above this, and they do not conduct themselves this way. So how do we change that culture point? How do you tackle that? Men. We need men. We need to get men involved. Men need to stand—men that don't abuse need to stand up to the men that do. And that, to me, obviously, I've started to pound my hand on the test and everything else. That's okay, Cynthia. If we don't get men involved, we're not going to make sustainable change. There's a few programs that I learned about on my trip around the world. One was in New Zealand, and it's called the Man Up campaign. And it's a really important program that's been—what they're doing is they're teaching men to be better fathers, to be better husbands, to have more respect for themselves and for women and for children, too. And we've got some of those kind of programs here in Hawaii. We've got some on the mainland. And then we've got one that came out of Canada that I also learned about, which is called the White Ribbon Campaign. And I meant to bring you your white ribbon, and I—I can't remember everything, so I forgot. I have it with me. And the White Ribbon Campaign is the man who, when he puts the white ribbon on, says, a little pledge, I will not commit, condone, or keep silent about violence against women and girls. How often has there been locker room talk going on? And when I say locker room talk, you guys know who I'm talking about, right? Yeah, we all know who you're talking about, Cynthia. Thank you. But—so it's just locker room talk, you know? And we've got to stop dismissing those kinds of things as locker room talk as if it's okay to talk that way. And men need to stand up to other men and say, when they hear that locker room talk, I say, wait a minute, that's not okay. You can't treat women like that. Right now, because of our patriarchal society and the way things are set up culturally, like you say, men can do whatever they want. And it shouldn't be that way. And women are not lesser human beings that can be toyed with, played with, injured or abused. And until we start changing those parameters in that paradigm, it's not going to change. Yeah, but you know, it strikes me, something you said, it strikes me that this is not just a matter of how you see women, it's a matter of how you see—a man sees himself. Right. It's a statement of his own worldview, it's a statement of his own personal condition. So we really have to go to that, don't we, if we're going to fix this properly? Absolutely. My brother has a program over in Kenya where that's exactly what he's doing. It started, it's called No Means No Worldwide, and it started as a self-defense program for women. And then it's evolved into also a program where they teach boys how to be more respectful, how to respect themselves, how to respect women, what respectful behavior it looks like. And his program is just about to be instigated in all of the schools in Nairobi, all the high schools in Nairobi are going to start having his program there, which is a pretty special thing. What's your advice to women? I mean, of course, stand up, of course, be me too. Of course, you know, take the risk of exposing the people who are violating the code of civilized behavior. Right. But sometimes that's not so easy. So what's your—there's camera one. Tell them, tell those women and girls what they need to do, what their thought process should be. First off, I know that a lot of women, when they are in that situation, get stuck in the one day, I'll be good enough syndrome. And I want you to know you're already good enough. It's not a matter of one day I'll be good enough and he'll stop because you're already good enough. The problem is not yours. The problem belongs to the abuser. The other thing is we need to start networking and really being there for each other. I think there's safety and there's strength in numbers and that's the best thing that this Me Too campaign has started. It's the best thing that has come out of this last election is that women are starting to take their power that they have inside and use it. When you see another woman that's hurting, reach out to her. Help her. Don't just turn away. It's not just a matter of, oh, let the survivors take care of themselves and be everybody. We all have to come together. Reach out for help. If you don't get it the first time, reach out again. Keep reaching out until you get the help that you need. You are not alone, even though you feel like you're alone. Those are the things that I would say to a woman out there that is in that sort of a situation right now. We don't have time to get into it, but that's also the kind of mindset that the police should have. Yes. Thank you. I think that the cognizant and otherwise should have and employers and corporate capital companies, they need to have the same respect for each other. That's exactly right. And until we get that, we're not going to make the kind of change we need to make. Although, I understand that the legislators are actually in session and they're going to be working on some of these things. We'll be watching them. I will be interviewing them on my show. Cynthia Thielen has already said she'll come. Very good. The session's over. We'll be waiting. Okay. Great show. And I'm so happy to meet you and, I mean, meet you for the first time. Meet you. Thank you so much, Cynthia. Thank you, Jay. I really appreciate you being here. I appreciate everything that you've done giving me this platform and giving me a chance to come and tell my story too. Thank you. Don't stop or I'll meet it. Okay. I won't. Thank you. I don't have.